bookmark_borderGMOs Are Healthier

Almost all GMO’s that are produced for human consumption are healthier for you than their non-GMO counterpart. For instance, colored carrots, tomatoes and potatoes are being bred to help prevent cancer.

The USDA reports:
Researchers with the Agricultural Research Service may have found the best way to entice consumers to eat their veggies: Surprise them. They’re breeding carrots that come in a palette of totally unexpected colors including yellow, dark orange, bright red–even purple.

With their flashy colors, these conventionally-bred carrots could dress up any dull meal. But what’s getting scientists’ attention is finding that the bright veggies are full of pigments with impressive health-promoting properties.

Xanthophylls give the yellow carrots their golden hues and have been linked with good eye health. Red carrots contain lycopene, a type of carotene also found in tomatoes that’s believed to guard against heart disease and some cancers.

Purple carrots owe their color to anthocyanins. In a class all by themselves, these pigments are considered to be powerful antioxidants that can guard the body’s fragile cells from the destructive effects of unstable molecules known as free radicals.

At first, Philipp Simon–the carrots’ breeder who works at the ARS Vegetable Crops Research Unit in Madison, Wis.–was unsure if these complex vegetables could provide nutrients in a form that the human body can use.

But in studies with nutritionist Sherry Tanumihardjo from the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Simon found that yellow carrots’ lutein was 65 percent as bioavailable as it is from a lutein supplement. The two also discovered that lycopene from red-pigmented carrots is 40 percent as bioavailable as it is from tomato paste.

And for consumers who don’t like tomatoes, having another food source of lycopene would be good news.

Learn more: Food For Thought

bookmark_borderNationwide Monsanto Protests

UNITED STATES — Protests against Monsanto were held throughout the nation including several locations in the Delaware Valley. Consumers are concerned about their health and wellness of Monsanto. The pesticide Round Up is speculated to be behind the bee colony collapse, as well as, neurological disorders to humans.

The company’s attempt to create a monopoly over seeds through GMO patents was one of the crowds gravest concerns.

 

 

bookmark_borderBayer Admits GMO Contamination is Out of Control

Greenpeace International, Dec 8, 2009

EXTRACT: Bayer has admitted it has been unable to control the spread of its genetically-engineered organisms despite ‘the best practices [to stop contamination]'(1). It shows that all outdoors field trials or commercial growing of GE crops must be stopped before our crops are irreversibly contaminated.


$2 million US dollar verdict against Bayer confirms company’s liability for an uncontrollable technology

Greenpeace welcomes the United States federal jury ruling on 4 December 2009 that Bayer CropScience LP must pay $2 million US dollars to two Missouri farmers after their rice crop was contaminated with an experimental variety of rice that the company was testing in 2006.

This verdict confirms that the responsibility for the consequences of GE (genetic engineering) contamination rests with the company that releases GE crops.

Bayer has admitted it has been unable to control the spread of its genetically-engineered organisms despite ‘the best practices [to stop contamination]'(1). It shows that all outdoors field trials or commercial growing of GE crops must be stopped before our crops are irreversibly contaminated.

A report prepared for Greenpeace International concluded that the total costs incurred throughout the world as a result of the contamination are estimated to range from $741 million to $1.285 billion US dollars.(2) The verdict indicates that Bayer is liable for what could turn out to be a large proportion of these costs, as it awards damages in the first two of more than 1,000 currently pending lawsuits. The decision must be used to support all claims for losses incurred by other US farmers whose crops have suffered from GE contamination.

(1) Bayers Defense lawyer, Mark Ferguson as reported in Harris, A. 2009.
Bayer Blamed at Trial for Crops ‘Contaminated’ by Modified Rice. Bloomberg News 4th November 2009, available at:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aT…

(2) E.N. Blue (2007) Risky Business. Economic and regulatory impacts from the unintended release of genetically engineered rice varieties into the rice merchandising system of the US. Report prepared for Greenpeace International, available online at http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/international/press….